Questions to think about during this lesson…

• For St. John Chrysostom, the details of Genesis 2:8 and Genesis 2:15 point to God’s great love, kindness and care for us. How so?
• For St. John Chrysostom, the details of Genesis 2:16-17 help us understand that the human being is subject to the Lord. How so?
• In Genesis 2:16-17, when God instructs Adam, the word “you” is plural in Greek. According to St. John Chrysostom, what’s the significance of this?
• How does St. John Chrysostom come to the conclusion that the human being had great intelligence and did not sin through ignorance?
• Considering Genesis 2:18, how does St. John Chrysostom demonstrate that the woman was created in equal esteem and in no way inferior to the man?
• Again and again, St. John Chrysostom urges us not to take the details in verses like Genesis 2:22 as literal descriptions of what happened. Instead, how does he insist that we understand them?
• How does St. John Chrysostom use Genesis 2:23 to demonstrate the high state of the human being in Paradise and that Adam was endowed with prophetic grace by the Holy Spirit?
• How does St. John Chrysostom use Genesis 2:24 to show that Adam is a prophet?
• How is it that most modern Bibles indicate Moses narrating Genesis 2:25, while others — such as the Orthodox Study Bible — have Adam speaking Genesis 2:25? (Hint: Remember, in the time of St. John Chrysostom, Bible manuscripts had no punctuation or spaces in between letters.)
• According to St. John Chrysostom, what purpose does Scripture have for including the detail in Genesis 2:25?
• In Genesis 3:1, a serpent speaks to Eve. What is St. John Chrysostom’s explanation for this?
• How does St. John Chrysostom draw out a lesson from Genesis 3:1 that we shall not cast our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6)?
• How does St. John Chrysostom consider Eve responsible for eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6)?

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